What good and why bother?
by Auua Ytjoml
Summary: None of the others seem to have his problem but Toad can't remember how they left Nam; as heroes or hostages. DOFP.


**A/N: The sun is now rising and it looks like I'm going to NOT get any sleep tonight (can I still call it tonight? This morning?) BUT I have finished watching Days of Future Past and have this to say about it.**

He can't remember how they got out of Nam. He remembers his packing orders. He remembers sitting in the barracks with the rest of the team just prior to departure. But when he tries to remember the moments after that-

He knows that he came home, got a job, quit, got in trouble, and, eventually, joined the Brotherhood. He knows this because he can do a background check on himself and that's what the records say. That's what the witnesses to his life say.

But when he tries to _remember_ it, memories of cheerful young faces returning home mingle with cold stares from men in black uniform. Memories of taking short orders through the chain wall separating the kitchen from serving floor mingle with rows of cages and endless days of trying to ignore the screaming; trying to forget that he's next. Memories of living in a crappy apartment are memories of living in a plush mansion. Memories of meeting Havok's brother in central park are memories of meeting Cyclops through the bars of their cages. Memories of bad reactions to the drugs for his PTSD are memories of forceful injections of God knows what and he can't take the pain and all he wants to do is die and-

And those memories aren't real. He's done the research. He's the best hacker the Brotherhood has when it comes down to cracking firewalls and breaking codes. He was never taken by Sergeant Trask. He was never at Three-Mile Island. He wasn't experimented on, he never recuperated from the nonexistent experimentation under the care of the X-men and he never, had never, did not ever watch his brother-in-arms die under the knife on the next operating table over.

Ink is alive for God's sake. And people don't come back from the dead. Ergo those memories are twisted nightmares and they never happened and would someone just make them _shut up_!

Mystique asks if he's all right. He lies. She'd gotten them out of Nam and he'll forever look up to her for her courage in leading their unit through ambush and counter-ambush without a single fatality, but he can't tell her that at night he dreams of blood dripping onto concrete floors and Ink's soundless screams as he locks eyes with him and begs him not to look away until its over. He can't.

For her part she never talks about the Wolverine who'd come from the future and asked her to change everything. That future is gone and, according to Magneto who, she's sure, had gotten his information from Charles, no one but Wolverine himself will ever know what that other future held. So why should she bring it up? What good would it do?

Toad can't quite remember how they got out of Nam; army uniforms or black. But he never brings it up. Whatever is affecting him clearly doesn't affect anyone else. So why bother if all he's going to get out of it is the label Crazy? Besides, whatever those other memories mean, whatever had happened in the second life he remembers living, the life he lived on the records is the better one. And if that's the life everyone else remembers then he won't mess things up by telling. What good would it do?

**The premise for Toad of all people keeping his alt. memories alongside his new 'real' ones comes from the Comics, specifically House of M where, after the Scarlet Witch changes all of history so that mutants are accepted and then (I can't remember how) history gets changed back, Toad is one of the very few people who actually remembers what happened. A while ago I read a fic Xany Chaos wrote detailing how that Toad dealt - you can read it here: s/3286917/1/Any-Way-Out-of-This-Dream - and after watching Raven stop Stryker from taking them I was immediately like "I've got to write this" only I did finish watching the movie first. **

**So what do you think?**


End file.
